American Idol Scotty McCreery sings at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

American Idol Scotty McCreery visited Disney’s Hollywood Studios on Monday May 30th, 2011 and sang his hit single “I love you this big” for adoring fans. Later, McCreery dropped in for a very special visit with the contestants of The American Idol Experience, where he provided some advice on how to give a winning audition and later helped announce the name of the winning contestant.

Since the American Idol Experience opened in 2008, it’s been a tradition that the recently crowned American Idol champion stops in to film a few commercials, add their likeness to the attraction, and pose for photos. Unfortunately it’s not a very good event for the average guest. If you’re not one of a select 100 or so fans, you don’t get the good view of the stage. As you can see from the first video, only about 100 fans were allowed near the stage. The rest had to watch from a very bad spot behind the press stand.

More photos and video below the jump:

Scotty does seem to have his fans, however. There were a lot of screams from kids (and adults) every time his name was mentioned, yet alone when he came out on stage. I think it’s a great tradition, but I hope Disney’s able to accommodate more fans if the tradition continues.

As an aside, the winning contestant at the noon performance was 15 year old Natalia Patino. Today was not her first performance at American Idol Experience, she had performed 8 months ago as well. She may have been a ‘ringer’, but she’s a talented teenager. Check out her Youtube channel.

It had been a while since I’d seen a showing of American Idol Experience. They have defanged the judges a bit, which does make the show seem more ‘Disney’. Unfortunately, it appears they’re having troubles attracting contestants to perform. They’ve added an announcement to the end of the show about audition availability and reduced the number of performances a day. I have to wonder how much longer this show can last at Walt Disney World.

(some photos courtesy Disney)